Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alan Duncan and Liam Byrne

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary has rightly underlined the importance of US-UK relations in this new world, but that relationship is kept alive by cultural and exchange programmes such as the Fulbright programme, which is now imperilled by President Trump’s proposal to cut 47% from its budget. Will the Foreign Secretary make representations to underline the fact that we think programmes such as Fulbright should be expanded and not pushed to the point of extinction?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

I stand here as a Kennedy scholar, which is a very similar structure, and we have a fantastic programme of Chevening scholars sponsored by the Foreign Office. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has confirmed that he will raise the Fulbright scholarships with Secretary Tillerson when he next sees him.

President Trump: State Visit

Debate between Alan Duncan and Liam Byrne

Monday 20th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Duncan]

Thank you, Mr Turner.

I was talking about the prospect of the President addressing both Houses of Parliament. Comment on whether that might happen has run completely ahead of itself. The simple fact is that no request for any parliamentary event to take place has been received from Washington. The question of addressing a meeting of Parliament has never even been mentioned. Any discussion or judgment of that possibility is therefore purely speculative.

Within the views that have been expressed about the appropriateness of a state visit from the President, there lurks a fundamental principle that Members of this House should consider very seriously—the principle of freedom of speech. President Trump was democratically elected by the American people under their own constitutional system. To have strong views about him is one matter, but to translate a difference of opinion into a demand to ban him is quite another.

Given the understandable questions on certain policy stances that arise on any change of Government, it is prudent for us to work closely alongside the United States as the new Administration chart their course. We have already seen the importance of that engagement: the Prime Minister’s early meeting with the President has elicited key commitments on NATO, which were echoed by the vice-president in Munich on Saturday, and has laid the groundwork to establish a swift post-Brexit free trade agreement. Further constructive engagement will be helped by a state visit.

In February 1917, a century ago, The Spectator published its view on the US and the UK:

“It would be easy to write down a hundred reasons why unclouded friendship and moral co-operation between the United States and Britain are a benefit to the world, and why an interruption of such relations is a detriment to progress and a disease world-wide in its effects.”

[Liam Byrne]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sir Alan Duncan]

No; I am in the middle of a quotation. It continues:

“But when we had written down all those reasons we should not have expressed the instinctive sentiments which go below and beyond them all. To our way of feeling, quarrelling and misunderstanding between the British and American peoples are like a thing contrary to Nature. They are so contrary to Nature that the times of misunderstanding have always seemed to us abnormal, and a return to friendship not an achievement of wise diplomacy…but merely a resumption of the normal.”

It is that historic normality that is reflected in this invitation.

This is a special moment for the special relationship. The visit should happen, the visit will happen, and when it does I trust that the United Kingdom will extend a polite and generous welcome to President Donald Trump.